1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to food products and to their methods of preparation. More particularly, the present invention relates to fried foods and to methods of preparing.
2. The Prior Art
Comestibles such as meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, etc. are commonly batter coated, breaded and then cooked by pan frying or deep fat frying. In particular, for example, fish portions are battered, breaded, par-fried and frozen. The frozen fish products are then sold to the food service industry or to consumers at retail for finish cooking either by baking or finish frying.
The par-fried coated fish portions typically contain from about 8% to 25% oil resulting from absorption during the frying step. Reductions in oil absorption are desired both by the food processor to reduce fryer oil replacement costs and by the consumer for diet and nutrition considerations.
Numerous art attempts have been made to reduce frying oil absorption. Modest reductions in the absorbed cooking fat level have been achieved by removing excess fat after deep fat frying. Typical excess fat removal processes comprise passing the fried product over a vibrating screen to allow the fat to drain off or to use high velocity streams of hot air.
Various methods of solvent extraction of the absorbed fat are also known. Such solvent extraction methods are not commercially practical usually due to problems associated with residual solvents, with high capitalization costs (e.g., using super critical gases as solvents) or with impairment of the products textural and flavor attributes.
Numerous art attempts have also been made to provide low-fat par-fried coated comestibles by limiting fat absorption rather than subsequently removing the absorbed fats. Absorption reduction techniques include reduced cooking times, specific cooking operating conditions, microwave or radiant heat cooking whether full or partial substitution for frying, surface drying or the like. Other attempts have included adding ingredients to the batter or breading to reduce oil pickup. In particular, the starch products industry advertise numerous starches for inclusion into the coating which are claimed to reduce oil absorption. Generally, however, the addition of these dry starches result in modest, if any reductions in oil absorption, e.g., up to 3% to 5% reductions in the weight of oil absorbed.
Given the state of the par-fried coated comestible art as described above, there is a continuing need for new and useful par-fried breaded and battered comestible products which contain reduced levels of absorbed fat but which possess desirable characteristic organoleptic and textural fried food attributes. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide new and useful coated comestibles and methods for their preparation characterized by reduced fat levels.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide fried food products which are crisper upon oven heating and methods for the preparation of such extra crispy fried food products.
It has been surprisingly discovered that the above objectives can be realized and superior coated comestibles provided which contain reduced fat levels as well as retail conventional fried organoleptic and textural attributes. The present breaded food products are prepared having an oil absorption barrier applied by the process of the present invention.